La musica di Gion

Kenji Mizoguchi's splendid "Gion Bayashi" begins like a docu-drama on the role of the geisha in Japanese society before turning into the kind of melodrama you might expect from Douglas Sirk. Eiko is the 16 year old trainee geisha and Miyoharu is the older, more experienced geisha who, as a friend of Eiko's late mother, takes her under her wing and who develops a strong, sisterly bond with her.

Few male directors could have handled this material with the empathy Mizoguchi brings to the subject. Men are basically secondary characters and are mostly seen as predators and Mizoguchi draws wonderful performances from his largely female cast and in particular from Michiyo Kogure as the unfortunate Miyoharu. If the film is not as well-known as some of the director's other works it remains absolutely essential nevertheless.

Kenji Mizoguchi, an important figure in the history of Japanese cinema, is very well known for his collaboration on the portrayal of Japanese women on screen; one of the first reasons for this being his sister, who was sold to a geisha house by his father's decision. This highly contributed to his attachment to highlighting women on his films.

This is another film where geishas and their lives are involved. The story concerns one geisha and her apprentice, who is supposed to have the will to take the training into full practice and seriousness. Everything seemed fine when the training was in process, but when it came to conclusion, Eiko (the apprentice) had to debut as a geisha, but could not bring herself to accept her chosen client. Likewise, Miyoharu (Eiko's trainer), finds trouble when rejecting a client in love with her. Both rejected clients happened to be wealthy businessmen important to the geisha house where they worked, thus finding problems from there on.

While the film may not be Mizoguchi's best, I can assure it is a wonderful joy to behold its cinematography. The camera positions and movements are just something to appreciate, accompanied by a totally honest and credible acting by pretty much every actor/actress involved.

If you have liked everything you have seen from this wonderful director, there is absolutely not any reason why you should not get your hands on this film.

My score: 7.5/10

A GEISHA is Miyagawa's late stage threnody with regard to those he has been steadily paying commiserations through his formidable cannon, namely, ordinary lives on the low-rung.

The English title may misguide audience by implying a young geisha's Bildungsroman in the Post- WWII Japan, that is quite right, but it only constitutes half of the story. In the beginning we are introduced to a 16-year-old Eiko (Wakao), arrives in Kyoto's Gion district and entreats named geisha Miyoharu (Kogure) to take her in as an apprentice. Eiko is saddled with her own tale of woe, his mother, a formal geisha and Miyoharu's friend, died young, her father Sawamoto (Shindô), a businessman on his irretrievable downturn, doesn't want anything to do with her. So being a geisha is her only outlet in this callous world and she takes great pride in this line-of-work, which is referred as "living works of art, intangible cultural assets" by her trainer, and resolves to not let anything cripple her work ethic, which means she will do best to please her patrons but will not be foisted into prostitution. She knows nothing about the delicate sex politics of the demimonde, so we need another character to tread into the underbelly.

Miyoharu, who gives us a first impression of materialistic and impassive when she rebuffs a client who cannot afford her service (for three months indeed), lends herself on a mother-sister figure towards the young and imprudent Eiko, and through her tactful mediation and altruistic deeds, she manages to give Eiko a decent debut merely after one-year of training, and immediately Eiko gets the attention of the district's biggest patron Kusuda (Kawazu), who is habitually prefers new blood, whereas Kanzaki (Koshiba), Kusuda's young business associate, has a different taste in women, and takes a liking to Miyoharu.

Only if both Eiko and Miyoharu would settle for these unsavory but finance-secured arrangements, there would be no kerfuffle ensuing. What happens next is inevitable when Eiko violently offends Kusuda's advances and puts their livelihood in jeopardy. Some ruffled feathers must be smoothed, and Sawamoto's gnarly advent to solicit money rubs salt into their affliction, what alternative do they have? The ending will have its say, as profound as it is poignant. What ultimately striking a chord in A GEISHA is Mizoguchi's deeply affectionate manifesto of the strength between two women, they are not consanguineous, yet, their rapport is so transcendentally dignified and soul- stirring because sometimes life could be hell but that shouldn't be the end of it, no despair needed when we can hold each other's hands and solider on.

Scale-wise, A GEISHA is on the lightweight end in Mizoguchi's yardstick, but nonetheless peppered with compositional circumspection and gifted with superlative emotional repercussions predicated on a string of prominent performances: Michiyo Kogure is beguilingly versatile which sounds like a lesser statement, checking the scenes where she wonderfully lets on courtesy, empathy, scorn and compassion alternatively when facing off an equally competent Eitarô Shindô as the grasping, repugnant Sawamoto, that is some fine acting chops; a callow Ayako Wakao is also well-attuned to Eiko's characteristics, not a soft touch as she appears and lastly, a shout-out to Chieko Naniwa, who inhabits herself so naturally as Madame Okimi, a woman who can commandeer the whole district on her say-so on top of her ever-pleasant-and-earnest camouflage. A GEISHA is after all, one of Mizoguchi's best and rightly deserves the garland.

As they decide to turn down two of their customers, a professional geisha and her apprentice chose unexpectedly to defy traditionalism. Perhaps one of Mizoguchi's most universally accessible films on Geishas theme and one that has definitely become the archetype for films dealing with such topics. The Japanese filmmaker had become very experienced at this stage and was able to deliver a compelling feminist drama full of defiance and protest against traditionalism's stubbornness and the suffering and misogyny that women sometimes have to endure.

There may be an element of atonement in Mizoguchi's films about exploited women. It is most powerful in "Street of Shame" but plays a role in "Gion bayashi" as well. The exploiters are bad indeed, though Mizoguchi gives them humanizing motivations; the exploited, while not too good to be true, are much better than most of the people I know.

What makes this visually beautiful film unforgettable and worthy of repeated viewing is, first, the evolving relationship between Older and Younger Sister, which is sufficiently imitative of life to satisfy the most rigorous champion of Kurosawa's "Lower Depths." As life happens, these two women evolve. It is this evolution which is the secret heart of "Gion Festival Music." Second, importantly, it is the nuanced, understated, but heroic performance of Michiyo Kogure as Miyoharu. Her artistry becomes manifest when her character portrait here is compared to her equally successful role of Taeko in Ozu's "Flavor of Green Tea over Rice," made the year before. The two women could not be more different, and she accomplishes the differences with bare flickers of change across her face and almost imperceptible alterations in body language.

These qualities inspire me to forgive the overly schematic plot and excessively contrasting portraits of the very good and the very bad.

At the end "Gion Festival Music," "A Geisha," or whatever title translation one wishes to use, is not principally about the cruel exploitation of women. The film has a secret. It is a love story. And I love this movie.